Chinese Type 052D Destroyer Arrives in St Petersburg: Why Russia Wishes it Had One Like It

On July 23 a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy Type 052D destroyer, the Jiaozuo, moored on the Lieutenant Schmidt Embankment in the Russian city of St. Petersburg. Chinese Consul General in St. Petersburg Luo Zhanhui was there to greet the ship. Following its arrival, the commander of the Leningrad Naval Base Andrey Saloshin and the Chairman of the St. Petersburg Committee for External Relations Evgeny Grigoriev met with the Jiazuo’s commander, before treating the crew “to some Leningrad ice cream.”  The rare visit to the former capital comes amid increasing conspicuous signs of Chinese support for Russia’s position in its ongoing conflict with NATO, and follows the deployment of Chinese forces for unprecedented joint exercises in Belarus, Russia’s sole ally in Europe, near its borders with NATO. The Jiaozuo is 23rd ship of its class to have been commissioned, and entered service in January 2022 after completion at the Jiangnan Shipyard.

The Type 052D currently forms the backbone of the Chinese Navy’s surface combat fleet, and after entering service in 2014 has seen two dozen of its class commissioned into service. This makes it by far the most widely fielded destroyer class in the world other than the U.S. Navy’s Arleigh Burke Class. The Type 052D is a design several decades ahead of the most capable Russian destroyers, as no new destroyers have been laid down for the Russian Navy since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. Each destroyer deploys 88 vertical launch cells, 24 of which are received for HHQ-10 surface to air missiles, while the remainder deploy a combination of missile classes including he HHQ-9 long range surface to air missile and the YJ-18 anti ship cruise missile.

Type 052Ds have more recently reportedly begun to deploy YJ-21 hypersonic missile, which was first confirmed to be integrated onto Type 055 destroyers in 2022. Cruising at speeds between Mach 6, with a Mach 10 terminal speed, the missiles have a 1,500 kilometre range and are considered the most capable of their kind in the world. Although Russian government sources have for over a decade made multiple indications that new destroyers could be built to replace Soviet-built ships, the country’s limited blue water surface operations has resulted in a greater focus on short ranged surface ships and long ranged submarines.